1. Field: The invention is in the field of methods and apparatus for donning sterile rubber gloves, such as surgical gloves, and is also concerned with the packaging of sterile gloves.
2. State of the Art: Many medical procedures require sterile conditions which means that doctors and other personnel involved must wear sterile gloves during the procedure. This is particularly true in operating rooms. Before gloving, the person carefully washes his hands and lower arms. Present procedures for donning sterile gloves require careful opening of the glove package to avoid contamination of the gloves and of the hands of the user, and careful holding of the glove while the hand of the user is inserted and works its way into position in the glove. This procedure generally requires an assistant to hold the gloves and is not only difficult and time consuming but requires two people. Various techniques are known for donning gloves without an assistant, but they are complicated and the chance for glove or hand contamination is greatly increased. In addition, because of the difficulty of inserting a hand into a glove, most users will choose a glove larger than necessary to make hand insertion easier. The use of larger gloves, however, lessens the dexterity and sensitivity of the gloved hands of the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,275,812 discloses a glove packaging system wherein a glove is packaged with its cuff about a ring and with a protective bag covering the sterile portion of the glove. In this way a user can hold the ring to support the glove during donning and the protective bag keeps the glove sterile during such operation. This is supposed to eliminate the need for an assistant in most cases. However, an assistant is still helpful in opening the package to avoid hand contamination. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,155,494; 4,069,913; and 4,002,276 show similar packages, with the glove mounted on a ring and protected by a protective bag surrounding the outside sterile portion of the glove.
Several of the patents mentioned above that show protective bags also suggest the use of a vacuum chamber to draw the glove and protective bag into the chamber and cause their inflation, so that a hand may be easily inserted into the glove. However, these vacuum systems do not supply the glove package to the vacuum chamber, inflate the glove, and then release the glove in an easily operated and foolproof manner, nor are they then ready to repeat the operation without an assistant to open the glove package, place the package in proper orientation on the machine, and remove the empty package after use.